IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fas/journl/v4y2014i1p1-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate Change and Agriculture: Current and Future Trends, and Implications for India

Author

Listed:
  • T. Jayaraman

    (Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)

  • Kamal Murari

    (Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.)

Abstract

Agriculture is vulnerable to the current state of climate variability as well as to projected changes in climate because of anthropogenic global warming. Models of crop production, considered together with global climate models, indicate that global warming will increase the exposure of major crops to temperature stress, leading ultimately to lower yields. Such decreases in yields vary significantly across the globe (and there remain significant uncertainties about their magnitude). Various studies also indicate that climate variability alone has the potential to decrease yields to an extent comparable to or greater than the decrease in yields expected due to rising mean temperatures. Following a survey of these results at the global level, this paper explores some aspects of the impact of climate variability and projected changes in the mean values of temperature and precipitation at the regional level for India. There are significant uncertainties in predicting changes in rainfall patterns for India, particularly because of difficulties in understanding and predicting monsoon behaviour. More robust results are available regarding future rises in temperature expected in the Indian subcontinent. While the dependence of Indian agriculture on rainfall is well-known, the significance of increased temperature variability must also now be considered. The paper emphasises the importance of distinguishing between current climate variability and future changes in climate with respect to the mean and the variance of climate variables, especially in understanding the socio-economic impact of climate change on Indian agriculture. Using village-level data on agricultural production, yield, and incomes from the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI), it argues that conflating current climate variability and future climate change obscures the fact that inequality and oppression are the key to why poor and marginal farmers suffer the impact of climate variability today, even when climate change does not yet have a serious negative impact on Indian agriculture. At the same time, understanding the differentiated impact of climate variability across socio-economic categories of producers, agro-climatic zones, and crops in the current context can provide significant insights into climate adaptation in a future of global warming. A just and equitable policy for dealing with the impact of climate change on IndiaÕs development must therefore pay as much attention to climate adaptation, especially with reference to agricultural production, as it does to climate change mitigation.

Suggested Citation

  • T. Jayaraman & Kamal Murari, 2014. "Climate Change and Agriculture: Current and Future Trends, and Implications for India," Journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 4(1), pages 1-49, February-.
  • Handle: RePEc:fas:journl:v:4:y:2014:i:1:p:1-49
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ras.org.in/index.php?Abstract=climate_change_and_agriculture_83
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nagarajan, Aravindhan, 2019. "Addressing the Climate Change Debate in Agriculture," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 9(1), July.
    2. Reddy, Mallidi P.S.R. & Mathur, Ayush K. & Jain, Rohit K. & Agarwal, Sandip K. & Singh, Sriramjee, 2022. "Climate change and weather variability in crop modelling: Evidence from rice yield trials in India using LSTM model," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322362, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Jayaraman, T., 2014. "Can Political Ecology Comprehend Climate Change?," Review of Agrarian Studies, Foundation for Agrarian Studies, vol. 4(2), December.
    4. Chandra Sekhar Bahinipati & Vijay Kumar & P. K. Viswanathan, 2021. "An evidence-based systematic review on farmers’ adaptation strategies in India," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 13(2), pages 399-418, April.
    5. Hochman, Zvi & Horan, Heidi & Reddy, D. Raji & Sreenivas, G. & Tallapragada, Chiranjeevi & Adusumilli, Ravindra & Gaydon, Donald S. & Laing, Alison & Kokic, Philip & Singh, Kamalesh K. & Roth, Christi, 2017. "Smallholder farmers managing climate risk in India: 2. Is it climate-smart?," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 61-72.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fas:journl:v:4:y:2014:i:1:p:1-49. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prof. VK Ramachandran (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ras.org.in .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.